Takeover #07 - Caterina Montesi
A detail which becomes everything.
Good morning fellas. Today I present you with great joy another interesting takeover. Squint your eyes. Look at the details. Let’s go.
Only for the Takeovers my text will be in italic, just to distinguish it from the guest’s. My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #24.
Intro:
Caterina Montesi is an italian visual artist with an eye for details. Zooming on unconventional objects like polystyrene packing blocks, hinges or switches allows her to extract images that are similar to metaphysical scenes. The delicacy of Lauretta Vinciarelli meets the attention for atypical situations of the Rojo Kansatsu Gakkai. She doesn’t give clues on the scale of the objects, letting them be at the same time a landscape, an interior or the tiniest detail: aseptic places where is possible to rest or just pass by. “I'd rather live in the drawings” she said. I can only agree and leave the word to her.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caterina_montesi/
Website: https://www.caterinamontesi.com/
Insights
I was at the psychologist's when I realized that there was a similarity between my way of analyzing the reality that surrounds me and my artistic modus operandi: "you see, when I try to understand a situation I always end up losing the overall picture and get obsessed on a microscopic detail, which for me becomes everything ".
I have always lost myself in the details: isolate, sample, catalog, focus, remove ...
If I have to find something that unites my works, it is certainly these operations of scanning and analyzing the shapes in their detail.
Mine may seem a clinical and aseptic vision, but the truth is that for me observing is primarily a spiritual and erotic practice.
An erotic act in the sense that I observe the shapes of things with pleasure, I touch them with my eyes, I explore them in every component, I would like to caress them.
During last year I have started making images that explore the architecture of objects.
It is like an inventory of shapes that for various reasons catch my attention. Through photography, or drawing from life, I dwell for a long time on the components of objects that I find interesting, and mentally breaking down the geometries I try to grasp the mechanisms and ideas behind that artifact, to visually transform it into something else. Basically, I design in reverse.
I am fascinated by how these forms underlie the need and synthesis of technical, aesthetic and production decisions, and how they are able to tell the stories, habits and customs of an entire society.
Forms that through drawing become landscapes to be explored. Forms thus reported on the level of the imagination, which is that of the project of utopia.
In this operation, the scale of what I like to observe and represent makes no distinction between a pin, a toaster or an industrial complex. For me, everything is architecture, that is, a three-dimensional and sensual expression of thought in space.
Very beautiful links
I am certainly moved by a certain animism. The objects that surround us define us and place us in the world. On them we deposit stories, moods and passions. Whether we use them, whether they are indifferent to us and we abandon them, they do not stop radiating a particular energy of their own.
For some time I have found intuitions mainly from direct experience (if you want to win me over, take me on a trip to the hardware store), but there are many artists from whom I draw inspiration. Primarily from photography.
What I like about optical instruments is their unique ability to show us things that the eye cannot. For example: have you ever seen a close up of how a vinyl is made?
What time do the images live? What time do our objects live?
How long is a minute of photography?
Or what transformations occur in the continuous and prolonged observation of the same bowl photographed constantly over a decade? (I love obsessive artists).
Interesting Franco Vimercati online exhibition.
What happens instead, if we push the quality of a still life photograph to a surreal level?
Nowadays thanks to optical devices and CGI we have reached an impressive quality, and in the photographic work of Maxime Guyon (1990) this quality is expressed at the highest levels.
Artist and commercial photographer, his images are aesthetically and poetically the opposite of those of Vimercati, they speak to us of an eternal and digital time, in which there is no room for imperfection and no time for aging. Everything is smooth and shiny.
The same quality is applied to both the photograph of a sports car and that of a toothbrush, in the virtual plane these artifacts have the same importance.
In his images I recognize a morbid attraction to technology, a formal pleasure in details, shiny materials, mechanisms, inventions.
Pure visual pleasure for hi-tech fetishists.
Sweet IG pages
Like many people, I am often attracted to what is different from me, especially those more free and spontaneous expressions that come out of the grids. (Will I ever abandon the rulers?)
Here are some of my favorite pages on IG:
The sculptures of signs by Ronan Bouroullec: A very famous designer, in his drawings I can capture his passion for form and composition. Crazy colors.
The poetic vandalisms of John Divola: A work he did in the 70s but which he recently resumed now that he's 70. How punk is Uncle Divola?
The overwhelming synthesis of Andrea de Franco: SUPER draughtsman, author of a beautiful comic starring a cup of coffee that you can find here.
Misc
Guilty pleasure moment: YUAN GROUP HOLDING COMPANY Cargo Transportation and Profesional Construction and farming Company A page full of videos of mega buildings, trucks, giant wind turbines and aqueducts with super tacky Chinese pop music in the background. Pure poetry.
Hey, wasn't this a newsletter dedicated to the representation of architecture?
Where have we ended up?
I don’t know.
Such an incredible takeover. Thanks Caterina for opening the doors of your research. Her IG and website are at the top of the nsl.
If you enjoyed this newsletter don’t forget to share it, like it, comment it and obviously subscribe if you haven’t done it yet.
Have a focused week-end.
CIAO
Federico